A detailed biography of Mao Zedong is Ross Terrill,Mao (1980, reissued 1981). Two earlier works that remain useful for the pre-1949 period are Jerome Ch’en,Mao and the Chinese Revolution (1965, reissued 1972); and Stuart R. Schram,Mao Tse-tung, rev. ed. (1967, reprinted 1974). See also Schram’s Mao Zedong, A Preliminary Reassessment (1983). The most vivid account of Mao’s youth is his autobiography as recounted in 1936 in Edgar Snow,Red Star over China, rev. ed. (1968, reissued 1974). Jui Li,The Early Revolutionary Activities of Comrade Mao Tse-tung (1977; originally published in Chinese, 1957), is also an important source.

Regarding Mao Zedong’s thought, a substantial collection of source materials for the period before 1949 is available in Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung, 5 vol. (1961–77). A variorum in Chinese of the collected writings of Mao to 1949 is Mao Tse-tung chi, ed. by Minoru Takeuchi, 10 vol. (1970–72), completed by a set of supplements, Mao Tse-tung chi pu chüan (1983–85). Mao’s talks and letters from 1956 to 1971 are found in Stuart R. Schram (ed.), Mao Tse-tung Unrehearsed (1974, U.S. title, Chairman Mao Talks to the People, 1975). See also Also useful are Jerome Ch’en (ed.), Mao Papers (1970); and Mao Tsetung,A Critique of Soviet Economics (1977), trans. from Chinese by Moss Roberts.On Mao’s thought in his early years, see Brantly Womack,The Foundation of Mao Zedong’s Political Thought, 1917–1935 (1982); Frederic Wakeman, Jr.,History and Will: Philosophical Perspectives of Mao Tse-tung’s Thought (1973, reprinted 1975), which surveys Mao’s thought in his early years and links Mao’s ideas of the May Fourth period with those of the Cultural Revolution; and Raymond F. Wylie,The Emergence of Maoism (1980). John Bryan Starr,Continuing the Revolution: The Political Thought of Mao (1979), is a comprehensive overview that accepts at face value the Chinese view of the Chairman chairman during his lifetime. Among the older works, Arthur A. Cohen,The Communism of Mao Tse-tung (1964, reprinted 1971), stresses the Stalinist roots of Mao’s thought; and James Hsiung,Ideology and Practice: The Evolution of Chinese Communism (1970), emphasizes the links between Mao’s thought and Chinese tradition. See also Other works on his thought include Stuart R. Schram (ed.), The Political Thought of Mao Tse-tung, rev. ed. (1969), and The Thought of Mao Tse-tung (1989). Finally, a series of useful if somewhat premature appreciations are in Dick Wilson (ed.), Mao Tse-tung in the Scales of History (1977).